TORONTO — Opening night at the Air Canada Centre had the expected result, but the way the Toronto Raptors got there was anything but.

With the pre-season behind them, the biggest question about the Raptors coming into the regular season was how the kids would handle the all important second-unit duties.

The starting five, with four returnees and Norman Powell graduating from last year’s bench unit, was supposed to be the sure thing.

On opening night, though, the roles were reversed.

A stellar run at the end of the first quarter and the start of the second by the second unit — led by 14 points from the lone veteran in the group, C.J. Miles — all but settled the first game of the year, putting the Raps on their way to a 117-101 win over the visiting Chicago Bulls.

That was the good news. At least mildly concerning was a starting unit that failed to pull away from a Chicago team decimated by injury and self-imposed suspension.

Chicago’s starting five consisted of nine-year vet Robin Lopez and a bunch of guys who would either come off the bench for every other NBA team or, in some cases, occupy a seat on that same bench with garbage time likely the only hope to see the floor. Injuries to Kris Dunn, Zach LaVine and Nikola Mirotic, not to mention a suspension to Bobby Portis for putting Mirotic on the injured list in a fight during practice this week, have sapped most of the top-end talent out of the lineup for a Bulls team that didn’t have a ton to begin with.

But where the Raptors’ starters failed to take advantage, the young bench, along with Miles, more than made up the difference.

With 1:40 to go in the first quarter, head coach Dwane Casey subbed out his entire starting five. When their replacements started to leave the floor about seven minutes later, they did so on a 23-5 run and the game out of reach for all intents and purposes.

“I was really impressed with the young group — came in and didn’t look like they were deers in headlights,” Casey said.

But Casey also sounded very much like a coach who expected the starting five to struggle initially, because the change from an iso-dominant offence to one that demands more ball movement goes against what this group has always known.

DeMar DeRozan had just 11 points on 2-of-9 shooting and at times seemed to be giving up good looks as he drove the lane, opting instead for a kickout.

Casey is confident that it is all part and parcel of adjusting to this new offence.

“Kyle (Lowry’s) a great three-point shooter, so it’s easier for him, where DeMar has to get a bounce to get his shot off,” Casey said. “He’ll find it within what we’re doing. We won’t change anything to fit in, but there are places within the offence where he’s going to find a rhythm.”

Fortunately, the bench unit — Fred VanVleet, Delon Wright, Miles, rookie OG Anunoby and Jakob Poeltl — has no such history of one-on-one play to overcome. This style of moving the basketball and hunting the open shot is something they are well-versed in, and it showed.

All the Raptors really want from this unit is to play even, and extend a lead where possible. But no one, certainly not at this stage in their development, expected them to win the game for the Raptors Thursday night.

And while it was Miles who got the second unit rolling with his red-hot shooting from outside, there were some pretty big contributions from the likes of Anunoby and Wright to make it an all-around standout night for the Raptors’ reserves.

Miles finished the night with a second-unit high of 22 points, including 6-of-9 from distance, with most of his damage coming in that game-changing run in the second quarter.

In the second half, again after the starters had failed to put much of a stamp on the game, it was Anunoby with nine points and 13 more from Wright along with five dimes that kept the Bulls from making much of a dent in the Raptors’ lead.

Jonas Valanciunas had a game-high 23 points for the Raptors on 8-of-15 shooting, in addition to a game-high 15 rebounds. Powell scored 15 points and shot 3-of-6 from behind the arc.

And while we’re on the topic of three-pointers, which has been a major focus throughout the pre-season, the Raptors for the night attempted 29 and hit on 13 of them for a solid 45 per cent success rate.

The other focus, the ball movement, didn’t appear to be quite as successful, although the 25 assists on 37 made baskets was extremely impressive.

AIRBALL IS OG’S ONLY FLAW

As debuts go, this one started out about as bad as it possibly could, but like with everything we’ve seen from rookie OG Anunoby to date, the final tally was more than anyone could have hoped.

Anunoby, who if we listened to projected returns would still be deep in his rehab from a long-term knee injury, opened the night with an ugly miss, an airball from the corner.

It was one of the only missteps he had all night.

“It was great,” MIles said of Anunoby’s NBA regular-season debut. “Way better than mine. I told him that too on the floor. He shot that first one (an airball) and I told him the good thing is it can’t get worse than that. It can only go up. You see an airball on that first shot, it’s almost a blessing in disguise. You are so relaxed after that because you can’t do worse than that. He laughed it off, and the next thing you know, he makes one, gets a couple of dunks and he’s OG again.”

In addition to his nine points, Anunoby finished with three rebounds and two assists and was a team-best plus-26 for the evening. Not bad for a guy who wasn’t expected back until December at the earliest.

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